Winter Salon 2010 :: Nicole Schmoelzer

Winter Salon 2010. Nicole Schmoelzer. Staining 132, 2010. Oil, ink on linen. 60 x 55 in.

Winter Salon 2010 Opens Nov 2

Micaëla Gallery is pleased to announce the Winter Salon 2010 exhibition of artwork by artists Kathleen Elliot, Grant Garmezy, Scott Kildall, Mark Leibowitz, Silvia Levenson, Prema Murthy, Eugenia Pardue, Lorraine Peltz, and Nicole Schmoelzer.

Opening with a private reception co-hosted by Leibowitz and Ruinart Champagne (a Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy company), the exhibition presents work unified by ideas of extravagant beauty and thoughtful indulgences.

Images by California-based photographer Mark Leibowitz's portfolio, an ongoing series titled, "Backstage" will be featured collaboratively with Ruinart (LVMH) and Whitewall Magazine at his introduction to Art Basel Miami at the Betsy Hotel on December 2. Plan to read Whitewall Magazine’s post-Art Basel Miami commentary.

The Winter Salon 2010 opens for viewing November 2, 2011.

We're very excited that Mark Leibowitz joins us for the reception on Thursday, November 4, from 5 to 7.30 pm. We hope you will help us welcome him and discuss his globe-trotting work for the fashion avant garde and haute couture houses such as Vogue and Galliano.

You won't want to miss seeing Leibowitz’s exquisite images, so please mark your calendar now.

SCOPE Basel 2010

Delighted to announce we'll be presenting Micaela Gallery artists at SCOPE Basel 2010!

We look forward to an excellent fair and hope you'll join us for beautiful art, a warm hello and good conversation!

Exhibition ends May 1

On May 1, Micaela Gallery's current exhibition, featuring paintings by Lorraine Peltz and Nicole Schmoelzer, and a multi-media installation by Silvia Levenson, will come to a close.

The exhibition essay, written by Maria Porges, was placed online by ArtSlant, and is published in Peltz' exhibition catalog. Sabine of Art Moco, also wrote a short review, lightly referencing Lorraine Peltz' occupation with the feminine agenda in our daily conundrum.

Image: Lorraine Peltz. Chandelier Yellow, 2010. Oil and acrylic on canvas. 40 x 40 in. Singular.

Nicole Schmoelzer at Villa Montalvo

SEEING LIGHT: A collection of new works by Nicole Schmoelzer
Opening Reception: Friday, April 9, 6 to 8 p.m.

Painter and Lucas Artists Residency Fellow Nicole Schmoelzer presents a collection of new works in the Project Space Gallery at Montalvo Arts Center, in a solo exhibition entitled Seeing Light. Schmoelzer, a native of Switzerland, has always been interested in light and the ideas of luminosity, brightness, and transparency. This focus is central to understanding Schmoelzer's body of work, which comprises compositions of brightly colored abstractions that derive from layers of paint upon a single surface.

Since arriving at the Lucas Artist Residency Programs in mid-January, Schmoelzer has been creating a series of works on canvas and paper that reflect shifts in the California light that have captured her throughout her residency. Montalvo's environment has led to new experimentations in her work as Schmoelzer has not only paired colors in new ways, but also investigated the contrast between light and dark, allowing more grey and black to inhabit her compositions. These new works still feature her vibrant colors and signature style of complex paintings that result from layers of ink, oil, and watercolor on one surface.

Schmoelzer, who describes her staining process as a balance between experience and "coincidence," will offer a talk-back during the opening reception on April 9.

Nicole Schmoelzer's painting, "Staining," 2010, on view in Seeing Light at the Montalvo Arts Center's Project Space Gallery. Schmoelzer will be present at an opening reception on Friday, April 9 from 6pm - 8pm. The exhibition runs through June 6.

Seeing Light
April 9 - June 6
Project Space Gallery
Thurs-Sun 11am-3pm

Montalvo Arts Center
15400 Montalvo Road
Saratoga, California 95070
http://www.montalvoarts.org

Nicole Schmoelzer

Nicole Schmölzer (born 1968, Switzerland) is a painter's painter. Introduced to painting at an early age through the art school Martenot (1975-88), she continued to the Paris branch of Martenot in 1988-89, teaching art during the following 10 years to students of various ages. Schmölzer furthered her education with studies in art science, literature and linguistics at universities in Basel and Geneva, concluding with her thesis on Josef Albers’ interaction of color. Her wide interest in fine art ranges from personal expression to the social and historical, as well as to philosophical and economical meaning. She completed her postgraduate program on Cultural Studies in Berlin and Basel (1998, 2003-04) by publishing a research paper on corporate-related art awards.

Since 1995, Schmölzer has worked regularly with galleries representing her work in Europe and the United States. She received grants from the Art OMI Foundation NY, the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation in New Mexico, the Valparaiso Foundation in Spain, and Villa Montalvo in California.

Schmölzer's painting focuses on the substantive properties as well as the interactive capacities of color. Her intention is to challenge the limits of color. As she generates greater subtleties in behavior and movement of the medium, the fluidity of the paint becomes structural. She uses terms such as “modeling” and “pushing the color back” to describe her processes of application, spreading, reduction and abrasion of pigment into and off the primed surface. Choosing oil paint for its luminosity, she studies how the layers of colors emit transcendence in their relationship to the shifting planes of dimension. Schmölzer travels these spatial relationships with her innate ability to translate the boundaries between interior dialogue and imposed definition, between organic experience and applied order.

A complete portfolio of her current exhibition may be downloaded here.

SILVIA LEVENSON, LORRAINE PELTZ + NICOLE SCHMOELZER

Opening 2 March
Reception 4 March
Exhibition through 1 May

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA - 21 February 2010 (for immediate release)
Micaëla Gallery is proud to present "SILVIA LEVENSON, LORRAINE PELTZ + NICOLE SCHMOELZER," a multi-media exhibition showcasing artworks by three talented artists, Silvia Levenson (Italy), Lorraine Peltz (Chicago), and Nicole Schmoelzer (Switzerland), whose work takes a unique approach to issues of women's fantasies, ideas of beauty, and modern day living interpreted through mediums of sculpture, paint, and video.

Lorraine Peltz's recent paintings are complex ruminations on the nature of private identity and public persona. Using imagery culled from both personal history and the contemporary moment, they reference both past and present. The image of a chandelier conjures a remembered culture and the patterned flowers, starbursts, and decorative flourishes present the now - particularly women's fantasy and desires - through pure painterly pleasure.

Nicole Schmoelzer works with paint on linen and paper, developing a number of series whose topic is the very behavior of color itself. In Schmoelzer's paintings, the color yellow plays in important role. As she states, "...partly because it is extremely difficult to replicate, its presence an act of resistance to the age of mechanical (and digital) reproduction... It is also an evocative color with a wide range of associations, foremost of which, perhaps, is light: like sun breaking through, implying heat, energy, life."

Silvia Levenson's sculpture presents a dark and comic vision of modern home life, by re-fashioning house wares and pharmaceuticals in candy-colored glass. In her work, a standard IKEA chair with a kiln-cast seat is placed on a floor of fused, iridescent glass tiles, sandblasted with the names of common antidepressants. The pastel colors used by Levenson for the tiles convey a certain idea of calm and relaxation, in contrast to the names of medicines. In the background, there is a projected video piece, "Everything is OK," which she made with her daughter, Natalia Saurin.

Image credits:
Above left: Nicole Schmoelzer. Staining 1109-132, 2010. Oil on Linen, 70 x 60 in.
Above right: Lorraine Peltz. Chandelier Black, 2010. Oil and Acrylic on Canvas, 40 x 40 in.
Left: Silvia Levenson. Life Strategies, 2009. Installation: Glass, found object, video. 70 x 70 in.

A print exhibition catalog, PDF exhibition catalog, photographs and high resolution images are available upon request.